*Editting with a point: Perhaps everyone assumes a local audience.

You pay a percentage of the hypothetical rent as tax. There is a lower rate if you're a small business, and there are also tax reliefs for various reasons (charity, partial building occupation, etc.)

But pubs have been in trouble for quite some time: https://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Article/2025/05/27/numbe...

Pubs have high costs, small margins and customers are extremely price-sensitive. What pubs are generally asking for is more types of relief, because what we tend to see is pubs close, people in the area become more isolated, and the building remains empty for years thereafter. [] Pubs appreciated the post-COVID relief, but tax rates are about to shoot up.

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But pubs are a weird place to draw the line.

I know a lot of bars in my area also are places to play board games nowadays.

There’s time for some party to sort themselves out before the next election is due (Aug 2029).

It doesn't benefit a town if rent is so expensive that their businesses shut down.

This could all simply be due to a devaluation of the currency, rather than due to increased desirability or productivity.

It's just basic communications skills, and honestly decency, to describe what a thing is and who it's for.

Maybe someone who isn't the target audience still wants to learn about the thing? Which this site provides no way of doing. That's the problem. Why choose to be inaccessible like that, when it's so easy to add a couple of works and links?

> or poke around out of curiosity

You mean like by following links that are supplied? Because that's my complaint: there are no links.

Maybe it screams "not American", but the rest of the Commonwealth does exist, you know. Some of us are standing right here.

You could buy a bottle of Teachers and serve yourself 25ml for 70p. You could buy a bottle of 30-year aged Macallan matured in sherry oak, and serve yourself 25ml for £160.

In a pub, you should be able to get a shot of blended whisky for about £4-6, and mass-market single malts (the kind you also find in supermarkets) for about £5-£10.

If you don't ask for a specific whisky, they should ask you which one you want, and/or say "is name alright?" and give you one of the cheap ones.

There is a reason the prime meridian goes through Greenwich and it isn’t because we asked nicely.

Give it a few months.

Sometimes you need moments like this to remind you that your assumption is wrong

If you are from the US, the only nation who doesn't frequently use a national TLD, the onus is on you to judge if a site is commercial, US-specific, global, or something else entirely.

People outside the USA, i.e. the majority of the world, often experience the opposite to what you've described: the tiresome implicit assumption that everything on the internet is US-related by default. It's not.

For a generic ".com" domain that isn't American, it's generally a good idea to yes, have a kind of minimal hint that tells you at least which country it's about, and at least a single link you can follow to get the broader context.

I'm following a link to it on HN. When I get there, I have zero context. Visitors to your site can come from anywhere, so it's generally considered a good idea to provide basic context.

Commercial pubs have existed for hundreds of year. But drinking doesn’t have to be commercial. In Berlin where I live there’s a non-profit hacker space that has a bar with at-cost drinks. It’s also perfectly legal to buy a beer and sit in the park. And of course, nothing is better than having friends over for a wine tasting.

Third places need to have some kind of draw, else nobody will show up. "If you build it, they will come" is for the movies. In the real world you need to have a compelling reason to have others come in your door. Space alone is not sufficient to establish a third space.

That draw doesn't necessarily have to be alcohol (or another drug), but it was the thing that many people used to want. Threatening use of a third space by fear of the wrath of a mighty deity only buys you one day out of the week, I'm afraid.

You're quite right that people no longer want alcohol like they used to. Why nurse a hangover when you can get the same dopamine rush scrolling through TikTok at home from the comfort of your couch? This means that many third spaces of yesteryear no longer serve a purpose, and as you call out, have closed as a result.

Which is all well and good, I guess, but some segment of the population still wish that there were third spaces for them to exist in. Trouble is that they've never been able to find anything as compelling as alcohol used to be across large swaths of the population, making a different kind of third space of the same scale a complete no-go. Trying to salvage the remaining alcohol-centric third places is the only path they can see to try and relive that glory.

Of course there are plenty of alcohol-free (or at least not alcohol focused) third spaces that revolve around niche interests, but these are generally not seen as a good fit for those who don't have that particular niche interest. Alcohol was historically so successful as the foundation for a third space because, once upon a time, nearly everyone was interested in it, bringing everyone in the door.

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Distilling what I remember about an entire book I read a couple years ago into a HN comment is difficult, but one of the more salient notes from it is this: Adult humans are naturally suspicious of others and slow to trust, particularly those they have no existing points of connection to. In contrast - children have much lower inhibitions in this sense and are much better at this.

Alcohol, in moderation, is one of the most effective tools in humanity's arsenal to more easily socialize with and create trust with total strangers.

The "reduction of inhibitions" we are all aware of in terms of being a risk of making negative choices, also serves to greatly reduce inhibition of the average adult to new interactions and experiences.

It is difficult to achieve this result in adults otherwise, especially in terms of a single activity with low investment required in time, money, facilities, and commitment.

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It is likely that as we transitioned from a society where adult encounters with total strangers were rare (tribal/village) to common (urban) that alcohol played a pretty significant role in creating the social cohesion for it.

It is not at all clear that we have found some successful alternative to this, and we may well find that even with all the documented downsides of it, we're worse off as a society for moving away from it.

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Again, this is my recollection of a book I read a couple years back - don't take this word for word. I will also note that it's not all rosy and has some thoughts on the types of consumption we should probably discourage as well and the general risk/reward of alcohol in society.

So 'you do you' and continue not drinking, no need to preach your life choices. I'm also 'millenial' , I enjoy many alcoholic drinks both socially and because they go with my meal or simply are something not hot/dairy/sweet and other than water.

> [Millennials] saw our parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents destroy their lives because of alcoholism, we lost friends and family because of being victims of drunk drivers, we saw people die of complications of a lifetime of drinking.

Why do you think alcoholism - which is certain distinct from drinking - was new with the generation above 'millenials'?

how so? I go to a climbing gym and it is a pretty social (and, of course, healthy) activity... crossfit is not my thing but apparently it is similar for more traditional workouts. to the extent you can consider a cycling or running club a "space" those are similar. dog parks for dog owners, playgrounds for parents, etc...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW_postcode_area

SW2 to SW9 are in alphabetical order: Brixton, Chelsea, Clapham, Earls Court, Fulham, South Ken, South Lambeth, Stockwell.

But then it starts again and you have to squint a bit for SW10-SW20: Brompton, Battersea, Balham, Barnes, Mortlake, Putney, Streatham, Tooting, Wandsworth, Wimbledon, West Wimbledon.

Looking at a few others (SE, etc) I see that the first chunk of them are in alphabetical order, but then they've added some extra ones later that break the ordering (e.g. SE19 onwards) but they have tried to add the extra ones in mostly alphabetical order too.

To be fair it's a 6-bedroom wing, but still a fun fact.

There is guy living off grid in I believe Dorset on YouTube called "Maximus Ironthumper". The post office told him to try sending himself letters, eventually they started turning up. Then that became the address.

He has a whole series of videos about how he kinda managed to setup his off grid living situation, there is everything from how to avoid planning permission, to how he setup his solar power.

Now asking An Post to overhaul their system to work on postcodes only is a bit like asking a postal service which requires postcodes to make them optional. It's technically possible, sure, but they're not going to want to spend the money.

_That said_, An Post's last resort routing department is pretty famous for getting the right address from pretty fragmentary information like "Mary down by the church, formerly of Kilnowhere", so I'm sure if a letter with just a eircode arrived there they'd sort it, but I imagine that An Post don't want to encourage people doing things that increases load on the labour intensive sorting.

Decades of hooliganism (mostly a thing of the past thankfully) has meant that you can't be in possession of alcohol within view of the pitch in the top 5 tiers in the UK. (And by the 5th tier you're looking at matches that have attendances anywhere down to 400 or so, although some clubs in the 5th tier still manage to attract 10000 fans to home games).

This spills out into the local community around stadiums too. Many pubs really close to the ground will have extra restrictions on matchdays, that's probably what you've experienced. But that's not just the UK, I remember going to a River Plate game in Buenos Aires 20 years ago and being amazed that on match days there was no alcohol served within a mile of the stadium or some such rule.

I've been to Champions League games in the UK sponsored by a variety of alcoholic drink companies and they weren't serving alcohol anywhere in the stadium (well, I guess they still do in the hospitality sections).

Even when the stadiums do serve alcohol they do strange things like stopping serving as the second half kicks off. As someone who wants to watch all of the football I've paid to go see it's a very odd thing getting a pint at half time and drinking it in under 10 minutes in order to be back to the stands in time for the second half to kick off. Us Brits just accept it and deal with it.

Compare that to watching rugby or cricket in the UK where you have no fan segregation and alcohol allowed at the seats.

It's also much more relaxed at the lower tiers of UK football. I've watched a few Dulwich Hamlet games with a friend and they allow to bring your own beers in (may have changed, haven't been for a few years), and sometimes have a "pay what you want" admission price.

Wherever I go in the UK I try and keep a look out for a local game, even if the football is terrible the people watching is often amazing and worth the admission price alone.